Saturday, January 23, 2016

Partnership with Ancestry.com Triples Number of Searchable Mexican Names Online

Salt Lake City, Utah, (January 22, 2016)-- FamilySearch International’s long-standing partnership with Ancestry.com has yielded another significant benefit to FamilySearch.orgpatrons in the form of more than 220 million newly searchable Mexican birth, marriage, and death records dating back to the 1500s. FamilySearch.org patrons with an Ancestry.com subscription can access these records through FamilySearch.org, directly on Ancestry.com, or for free at any of the more than 4,800 family history centers worldwide.

“This announcement is about two things,” said FamilySearch International CEO, Stephen T. Rockwood. “First, it is a celebration of the joy of discovery now available to more of our patrons with Mexican heritage. Second, it is a recognition of our valued partnership with Ancestry.com and how working together has made these high impact collections searchable online much quicker for personal family history research.”

The newly published records are the result of a collaborative microfilming effort over many years’ time between FamilySearch and various government and church entities within Mexico and Ancestry.com, which provided the indexing necessary to make the records searchable. Without Ancestry.com’s assistance, some estimates suggest it would have taken 20 years or more for volunteers to index the records and make them searchable.

This new collection of civil registration records significantly increases the existing Mexican resources available on or through FamilySearch.org, which include more than 72 million Catholic Church and 1930 Federal Census records, and 90 million browse-only Mexican civil registration record images from 28 of the 31 Mexican states.

Early Successes

Patrons are already sharing their success using the new records. For many years Edgar Gomez and his family looked diligently for a marriage record that would connect his Italian immigrant third great-grandfather, Giuseppe Palmieri, with his Mexican-born third great-grandmother, Juana Mendoza. Even visiting archives and paying for research assistance failed to yield any clues. Then, just weeks ago while seated at his dining room table, he struck “pay dirt” with a simple search launched from his family tree on FamilySearch.org.

“After years of searching, we suddenly discovered right in front of us the elusive marriage certificate we had been looking for,” he said. “The civil marriage had taken place when my great-great-grandparents were in their 50s, living in a suburb of Mexico City, hundreds of miles away from where they first met and 30 years after the dates we had been researching. Without indexed records, we probably would have never found this.”

Edgar describes the newly published records as “a hidden gem and a powerful tool for anybody with Mexican roots.” He says he plans to continue using it to solve many more family mysteries.

About FamilySearch

FamilySearch International is the largest genealogy organization in the world. FamilySearch is a nonprofit, volunteer-driven organization sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Millions of people use FamilySearch records, resources, and services to learn more about their family history. To help in this great pursuit, FamilySearch and its predecessors have been actively gathering, preserving, and sharing genealogical records worldwide for over 100 years. Patrons may access FamilySearch services and resources free online at FamilySearch.org or through over 4,813 family history centers in 130 countries, including the main Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah.